An Interview with Sean Leong Founder of PopWonders, an Online Platform for Subscription Based Businesses

Sean Leong is a serial entrepreneur and founder of PopWonders, an online platform for subscription based businesses. He has graduated from the University of Greenwich, UK with a BSc (Hons) Degree in Information Technology; Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Cardiff Metropolitan University, and a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) candidate in Computer Science.

We recently interviewed him to know more about his Startup and his entrepreneurial journey

Sean, Thank you for talking with us. Being a serial entrepreneur, what does the term ‘entrepreneurship’ mean to you.

Entrepreneurship is a great adventure. It’s a vehicle for evolution that is fast-paced, dynamic, challenging, and seldom boring! It is ultimately about discovering different sides of yourself. The best thing about entrepreneurship is overcoming your own limitations and being tested in every way imaginable. 

How and when did you come up with the idea of PopWonders? What were the initial challenges that you faced in your endeavor?

I’ve been obsessed with the idea of having and growing online business for a long time. But my first few attempts failed and didn’t work out. There’s nothing more demotivating than putting an insane amount of hours into building and promoting a product and then slowly coming to the realization that it’s going nowhere.

Luckily, after the initial disappointment had fizzled out, I realized that each time I failed, I was learning something nothing or nobody else could ever teach you:  real, actionable proof of what works and what doesn’t.

After so many failed attempts, I finally got it right with PopWonders, an all-in-one platform that enables users to build a subscription business.

You are known for providing a ‘subscription’ experience. For example ‘man subscription box’ among others. How did you get this idea?

Previously, I tried to build a product not because I truly needed it, but because I thought it was a neat idea and mistakenly assumed there would be a market for it.

It’s extremely hard to build a product you don’t actually need yourself —you will only be making it so much harder for yourself to succeed.

Instead, create a product you will love: you need to be your own customer in your early days, and there’s nothing better than creating a tool that solves a real problem or need you have.

Solving your own problem also makes your vision much stronger: you’re building something you truly believe in. So with PopWonders, I addressed a real need in a market that was growing; more importantly, I built something I myself loved to use.

How is the subscription commerce model different from the existing e-commerce model? What is the issue PopWonders trying to solve?

A subscription customer is worth 10 times more than a regular customer because those are the people loyal to that business [who] are most likely to spend more money.

One problem the merchant is facing in the existing e-commerce marketplace is the absence of brand awareness and loyalty. Consumers are hardly able to remember the brand name of the merchant. PopWonders enable the merchant to match with KOL for brand building. Another big benefit for smaller businesses is being able to get a better grip on inventory control. Inventory is such a problem because businesses order too much and then can’t sell. There are entire industries that have sprung up around this problem.

If someone is visiting your platform, he or she will be curious to know your business model. Do you mind sharing that?

PopWonders gives pre-existing businesses — or really any business with an existing audience or loyal clientele — a way to launch a monthly subscription service. PopWonders handles all the financial transaction activity, gives tools to track and manage inventory, KOL matching for influencing marketing, AI hybrid chatbot for customer service, and offers analytics tools for view customer shopping insight.

We intended on helping subscription companies market their products and a marketplace would be one piece of that. Our goal would be to drive shoppers to the best subscription product/service experiences while also giving new subscription merchant a launching pad to get some initial attention. We’re also looking at facilitating cross marketing between merchants and KOLs.

How can PopWonders help businesses impacted by Covid-19? Keeping the ongoing pandemic into consideration, what have you achieved? Also, what are your future plans?

We’re actively trying to help people start businesses. We are planning to launch our “Subscription Academy” next, which provide guidance and tutorial on starting a subscription business.

The company, which previously launched its service in beta, already has 100 merchants using its subscription service platform. Prior to the official launch on September, about a third of those companies were generating revenue for PopWonders. The idea of the platform is to help people in the slowing economy, especially with the impact of Covid-19 pandemic.